Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is “A Load of Bollocks”

The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality "a load of bollocks" and claiming he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others. If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet "bus lane".

Net neutrality really is the hot topic at the moment. Ignited by the Comcast fiasco, the concept of net neutrality has certainly been brought into the mainstream. Most ISPs are never quite forthcoming about their throttling, capping and otherwise interfering behavior, but that crowd certainly doesn’t include the CEO of Virgin Media, the UK’s second largest ISP.

In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett – who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago – has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.

“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.

With around 3.5 million customers in the UK, and already traffic shaping due to lack of capacity, it’s a sobering thought that at the behest of “content providers” with deep pockets, Virgin is prepared to speed up their traffic, which would presumably have a negative impact on those at the bottom of the ISP’s priority list, namely bandwidth hungry file-sharers.

Berkett then turned on the BBC and their iPlayer service, telling them – and other public broadcasters like them – that if they don’t pay a premium to gain faster access to Virgin Media’s customers, their service would be put into “bus lanes”.

It just shows that some ISPs are happy to throttle just about anyone in the name of profit, it’s just that most aren’t as open about it as Mr Berkett.